Diane M. Kimura

A good read for travelers who have concerns about the growing surveillance of our activities.

In the US, over 80 airports are currently piloting facial recognition technology. The TSA’s goal is to roll out the tech in all of the more than 430 airports that it covers, arguing that this kind of automation would reduce "friction” at airports — meaning, presumably, how long it takes passengers to move through security.

That should raise some eyebrows, because there are known risks with this AI technology, from the possibility that your face data will be stolen due to breaches to the chance that you’ll be misidentified as a criminal suspect — and jailed. Neither of these are hypothetical scenarios; the former has happened due to CBP system vulnerabilities and the latter has happened at the hands of police. And then, of course, there’s AI bias; facial recognition tech is known to disproportionately misidentify people of color.

But as dangerous as face recognition can be if it goes wrong, a greater concern could be what happens if it’s seen to work as intended. When I asked Joy Buolamwini, the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, what worries her about the use of this tech in airports, she said, "The big one for me is normalizing surveillance.”

Buolamwini argued that airport face recognition is a way of acclimating the public to having more and more sensitive information taken. "I see this on a longer trajectory,” she said. "And they’ve shown you the trajectory.”

Traveling this summer? Maybe don’t let the airport scan your face. — Vox
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